This paper discusses the use of discrete choice dynamic programming (DCDP) methods for evaluating policies of particular relevance to developing countries, such as policies to reduce child labor and increase school attendance, to improve school quality, to affect immigration flows, to expand old...

This paper discusses methods for evaluating the impacts of social programs prior to their implementation. Ex ante evaluation is useful for designing programs that achieve some optimality criteria, such as maximizing impact for a given cost. This paper illustrates through several examples the use...

This paper evaluates the impact of three different performance incentives schemes using data from a social experiment that randomized 88 Mexican high schools with over 40,000 students into three treatment groups and a control group. Treatment one provides individual incentives for performance on...

A recent literature has developed that combines two prominent empirical approaches to ex ante policy evaluation: randomized controlled trials (RCT) and structural estimation. The RCT provides a "gold-standard'' estimate of a particular treatment, but only of that treatment. Structural estimation...

A recent literature has developed that combines two prominent empirical approaches to ex ante policy evaluation: randomized controlled trials (RCT) and structural estimation. The RCT provides a “gold-standard" estimate of a particular treatment, but only of that treatment. Structural...

In this paper, we develop and estimate a model of retirement and savings incorporating limited borrowing, stochastic wage offers, health status and survival, social security benefits, Medicare and employer provided health insurance coverage, and intentional bequests. The model is estimated on...

In this paper, we propose a new approach to the empirical study of the relationships among schooling, youth employment and youth crime which provides a comprehensive analysis of the dynamic interactions among these choices and exposure to the criminal justice system. The empirical framework...

Using data from the NLSY79, we structurally estimate a dynamic model of the life cycle decisions of young women. The women make joint and sequential decisions about school attendance, work, marriage, fertility and welfare participation. We use the model to perform a set of counterfactual...

In this paper, we provide estimates of welfare benefit effects on a set of behaviors that includes welfare participation, fertility, marriage, work and schooling using approximations to the decision rules that would be derived from an explicit dynamic optimization problem. The estimates are...